Thread: Clinton says Obama is all talk, no action

Clinton says Obama is all talk, no action


Sen. Hillary Clinton makes a campaign appearance in Harrisburg, Pa., Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press
Mar. 11, 2008.

The Illinois senator, in Mississippi for today's primary, responds that the former first lady is trying to score 'cheap political points.'
By Johanna Neuman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
10:59 AM PDT, March 11, 2008
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton today attacked rival Sen. Barack Obama, contrasting his rhetoric and his actions on issues such as Iraq and free trade.

"If you're going to talk, you ought to mean what you say so people can count on it," she said at a rally in Harrisburg, Pa., six weeks before Pennsylvania holds its delegate-rich presidential primary on April 22.

On energy policy, Clinton disparaged Obama for promoting wind energy but voting for the administration's 2005 energy bill. On the Iraq war, she faulted him for pledging to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq while his former foreign policy advisor told European audiences to ignore the candidate's promise as politics. And on trade policy, she contended, Obama pledged to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement while a top economic advisor assured Canadians his promise was campaign rhetoric.

"There's a big difference between talk and action," she said.

The Obama campaign responded immediately, saying that Clinton is trying to score "cheap political points" with "a kitchen sink of distorted and discredited attacks that she knows aren't true."

Noting that Obama is visiting a wind plant today to highlight his support for the industry, spokesman Bill Burton said: "If Sen. Clinton wants to have an honest debate about why she voted against that bill, we're happy to have it, but she owes the voters of Pennsylvania more than the same old attack politics that Americans have already rejected across the country."

Obama, meanwhile, made a final stop this morning deep in the Delta in Mississippi, where voters are going to the polls, before flying to Pennsylvania to take his campaign against Clinton back up north.

Stopping at Buck's restaurant in Greenville -- a no-frills diner tucked into a down-at-the-heel strip mall, two doors up from Fast Tax and four doors down from the Washington County Work Center, where signs on the wall say: "Do the crime, pay the fine or work the time!!" -- Obama talked to voters about the ailing economy in the Delta.

"We just haven't seen as much opportunity come to this area as we'd like," he said. "And one of the challenges, I think, for the next president is making sure that we're serving all communities and not just some communities."

As Obama ordered a breakfast of eggs "scrambled hard," with turkey sausage, wheat toast and grits, one man shouted "I've been praying for you!" To which Obama replied, "I believe in prayer."

With 33 Democratic delegates at stake in today's election, Obama is hoping for a strong showing in Mississippi, with its large African American electorate, to recapture the momentum that characterized his campaign before Clinton won the big states of Ohio and Texas last Tuesday.

Sen. John McCain, who clinched the Republican nomination for president last week, took advantage of the still-raging competition between Clinton and Obama today to criticize Democrats for pledging to renegotiate NAFTA.

"We've got to stop this protectionist, NAFTA-bashing," McCain said at a town hall meeting at the suburban St. Louis headquarters of Savvis Inc., an information technology company..

Referring to a Cleveland debate in which both Clinton and Obama pledged to force Canada and Mexico to add protections for workers and the environment, McCain said renegotiation threatens other trade agreements around the world. "What are the other countries in the world going to think about the agreements we've negotiated with them?" he asked.

McCain acknowledged that many Americans, amid rising home foreclosures and dwindling manufacturing jobs, face tough times.

But he insisted that "the fundamentals of our economy are still strong," and argued that protectionism is not the answer. On trade, he said, "I'm a free trader."

McCain is on a nationwide fund-raising campaign this week before heading overseas next week -- to Jerusalem, London and Paris as part of a congressional delegation. He said he would not involve himself in U.S. efforts to negotiate peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians but would press allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to do more in Afghanistan to thwart a resurging Taliban.

johanna.neuman@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la ... 6360.story

"If you're going to talk, you ought to mean what you say so people can count on it,"

This actually came out of hitlery's mouth? WOW! If that isn't the pot calling the kettle black... SHEESH!